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Blogger: On finding our farm

I cannot wait to see my farm (or green grass for that matter) in the summer. It has been a long, cold winter here at Cow Comfort Inn Dairy. We chose Union Bridge, Md., to buy our dairy farm this past October because we thought it would be slightly warmer than our previous location, Lewisburg, Pa. We never expected our first winter to be like this.

Dave and I both grew up on dairy farms. Dave’s family had a small Jersey cow farm in Vermont, and my family owns a large dairy farm in central Pennsylvania. We met at Mason Dixon Farms in Gettysburg, Pa., where he had worked for five years and I was an intern through the business school from which I eventually graduated. After a year there, I “stole” him and brought him to my family’s dairy farm.

Let’s just say there are people who can work with family day in and day out, but I am not one of those people. It was a dream of David’s to own his own dairy, so after a year and a half, we left my family farm for a farm in Virginia. We started out by purchasing 90 cows, and after a year in Virginia we moved to Lewisburg, Pa. where we grew our herd to about 400 cows. All that time, however, we were renting facilities and never felt the business was truly ours as there was always a landlord to tend to.

We made the big step to finally purchase our own dairy farm – no more rent payments, but mortgage payments. We searched everywhere from Idaho to North Carolina to Tennessee. We settled on Maryland because it was south for me but not too south for David (I had wanted to settle in Florida!) Maryland allows us to easily visit both of our families. We’ve only been here for four months, and boy have we learned a lot in that short amount of time! When things freeze on the farm, those things usually break. More on that in upcoming blog posts.

I’m excited to share our many adventures with you as we adjust to our new surroundings here at Cow Comfort Inn Dairy, where cows enjoy their stay!